Now I know that animated gifs are not the “hottest” thing on the web (unless it is 1996 again?) but after taking so many photos - we decided to build a few flip books:
(click on the image to load the animated gif)

This is the extruder at Vermont Butter & Cheese - it pushes the goat cheese curd into a plastic mold to form the cheese they call Coupole. His knee controls the extruder, once the Coupole form is filled with curd he salts the bottom and pops it out onto the rack.

At the Mozzarella Company the entire staff helps make the mozzarella. Here they are forming the stretched curd into balls of various sizes and dropping them into cold water to help the cheese maintain its new shape.

At Rogue Creamery the team fills the metal forms with curd and then transfers them to draining racks, flipping the newly formed cheeses them as they go.

At Crave Brothers they use a mozzarella maker that stretches the curd and forces it into the proper size and shape. The stream of water is used to encourage the newly formed cheeses to plop out onto the table to be collected up and packaged.

At Oakvale Farm Dale scoops curd out of the vat and packs the forms before placing them on the hydraulic press.

Mariano at Fiscalini Cheese takes slabs of recently cheddared cheese and runs it through a mill leaving a pile of neat rectangle-shaped pieces of curd that will be salted and eventually scooped into large forms.

At Haystack Mountain Peter flips and wraps the freshly formed cheese in cheese cloth.

At Goat Lady Dairy they wrap each and every cheese by hand.

Here are the sheep at Shepherd’s Way at dusk.

Finally at the end of our trip we stopped just south of the Fingerlakes of NY and took a walk into the gorge at Watkins Glen…

This is so cool. I want to work with the group of ladies at the Mozzarella company. How about real cheese flipbooks for the holidays? From Goat to milk to x, y, z Kids could see where their cheese comes from…

I think your jazzy shirts would make great gifts, too. I’m adding it to my upcoming list on the Leather District Gourmet blog.

I love this (of course)!! My favorites are the headless arms reaching into the vat as Mariano stacks the curd and the one sheep (latter half) that just stands there watching rush hour. More, more!
What a grand adventure for you.
Rebecca